Another Way to Make
More Time for Real Teaching
This is what Hell is like: You signed up for a beginning scuba course based on an exception of all the fun and adventure you would have. Then reality hit home:
It’s your third open-water training dive, and your instructor is still not letting you do much more than just kneel on an ice-cold training platform, waiting your turn to perform yet another basic skill you’ve already done several times in the pool. It’s cold. The minutes seem to be dragging on endlessly — and, even though you know the quarry is filled with fish and interesting artifacts, at the moment you’re not getting to see anything cool…just like on the two previous dives. But, don’t worry: The instructor said that, at the end of your last dive, there might be five minutes left over to actually swim around and see something.
An exaggeration? Unfortunately, the answer is all too often No. And that’s too bad, because open-water training dives present a wonderful opportunity for students to get out and actually learn something…provided they get to do more than just sit on the bottom and wait.
“But hold a just a cotton pickin’ minute!” you say. “My training agency has given me four slates full of skills I have to get done during open-water training. There just isn’t time for much else.”
If you’ve not already done so, you need to go back and read last month’s special issue, Teach Different, Teach Better. It addresses several ways you can use time more effectively so that your Open Water students can actually get out and go diving — and, in the process, do a better job of mastering such skills as buoyancy control, dive planning and navigation, while building habits that help prevent diving emergencies, rather than merely respond to them.
In this issue, we’ll pass along another tip on how you can use time more effectively — while meeting the letter of your training agency’s standards (and the spirit of real learning).
Buoyancy control: More than just a “skill” »
::: TOP ::: SUBSCRIBE ::: CONTACT US ::: ABOUT US :::